Butterflies flew 2,600 miles across the Atlantic without stopping | Hacker News Reader

Butterflies flew 2,600 miles across the Atlantic without stopping

smithsonianmag.com

229 pointsraybb96 comments

There are times when you can cross the Atlantic on wind power without stopping. In 2016, Stan Honey, the inventor of car navigation, took a 100-foot sailboat across the Atlantic without tacking, knocking 27 hours off the previous time.[1] They kept the crew on standby until wind conditions were perfect, then set sail.

The butterflies were lucky. There must be many others that didn't make it.

[1] https://www.yachtingworld.com/special-reports/stan-honey-the...

  >The butterflies were lucky. There must be many others that didn't make it.

"Nature is prolific. There are many more creatures that are born than can possibly survive." -- Carl Sagan

It's a feature, not a bug! (pardon the pun)

I’m in awe of the tenacity of life.

Over a decade ago, a snowy owl made its way to the island of Oahu on its own. Sadly, it had to be killed because it arrived near Honolulu’s international airport and could not captured by animal control. An autopsy revealed that this owl had expended so much energy crossing the pacific that it almost certainly would have died of exhaustion within a few hours of its arrival. But, it still made it.

Hawaii has its own species of Owl. Their ancestors must have made a similar journey and had just enough luck to survive and establish a population there.

I’m fascinated by this. How did it happen? No owls migrate to Hawaii. Did this one get lost in a storm? Was it sheer luck that this owl picked the right direction while flying over the open ocean to end up finding Oahu? Do some owls just feel an urge to pick a direction and just keep flying? Was this one owl’s magnificent flight the result of some undescribed phenomenon?

Perhaps there is some rare instinct which inspires an individual to go on a suicidal journey into the unknown. A species sacrificing an individual to make the gamble that it will end up in some far flung biome and establishing itself there.

The flip side of this story is realizing just how many more snowy owls must have ended up over the Pacific Ocean and kept flying until they unceremoniously perished amongst the waves.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2012/01/details-emerge-about-snowy...

Besides from the impact of bacteria on entrepreneurship, the behavior of exploring/foraging bees[2], I think the most likely reason is actually losing one or more senses and relying on other senses which happen to lead you to travel in straight lines (e.g. magnetic) - just as moths use the Moon to travel very far in a straight line. Why these journeys begin and end is another question. Serotonin and dopamine might be involved.

[1] https://hbr.org/2022/07/a-common-parasite-can-make-people-mo...

[2] https://theconversation.com/some-bees-are-born-curious-while...

I don't forget, to establish a new owl community you have to convince a lady owl to come with you on the suicidal journey.

It was never mentioned in the article, but this owl could have been female and might have been gravid.

> babe we gonna fly towards the setting sun

> k

It may have been someones pet

That has been ruled out based on the results of the autopsy. Furthermore, Hawaii has severe restrictions on the import of exotic animals as pets and it is unlikely someone would have smuggled one in just to end up releasing it in urban Honolulu.

Once I had this vision in a strong ayahuasca trip... I met "Mother Nature", but it wasn't the feminine caring image you'd think of. It was an unstoppable force of life that did not had any caring of right or wrong. It only wanted to create more life. It had more a feeling of millions of beings crawling over each other, like a beehive or ants nests. Just devouring everything with "life".

Like a "Squiggle Maximizer" with a vengeance and attitude. It was awesome, but made me seriously reconsider the "sacredness" of life.

> but made me seriously reconsider the "sacredness" of life

When I think of life mattering, I think of the individual, not life in general.

I think nature is quite cruel and there's very little about nature to suggest that the life of an individual matters at all, but to that individual, their life is the most important thing they have.

It's like the argument people make to vegans: if we stop eating cows, they'll go extinct and that's bad.

It initially sounds bad to think of a species going extinct, but the species doesnt matter in this case. What really matters are the individuals who make up the species, and they're living a short existing with a cruel death. No cow would suffer if we stopped breeding them and let the species go extinct, but people think of the species as a being that woukd somehow be hurt by not existing.

I agree. I did not mean to say: “all life is meaningless “, but more that the green/ecological imagery of ‘mother nature’ that cares for you and needs caring was changed for me. Life itself can be a terrifying force. That the individual feels suffering is an effective but brutal feature of Life trying to maximise itself. We are all born in this system, and we should obviously try to minimise this suffering.

Abject nihilism is fucking lame, and I don't care whatever chemically-induced experiences you or anyone else has had or whatever value you think you found within them or whatever the fuck, but I'm frankly tired of pretending otherwise.

That’s a nihilist statement though. :p I was just outing my experience, no need to get that riled up.

These ideas are inherently harmful to spread to other people so flippantly—think of the possible nth-order effects for five fucking seconds, and you'll see what I mean.

(Or, don't because nothing fucking matters anyway, right, mannnn?)

We need to learn to respond to such nonsense swiftly, or we're completely and totally fucked as a civilization, as a species, in this information age of instantaneous transmission of thoughts and ideas.

Your ideas with regards to this matter are horrible, and you should feel horrible for proselytizing them.

(But, of course, you won't, because nothing fucking matters anyway, right, mannnn?)

>> think of the possible nth-order effects for five fucking seconds, and you'll see what I mean.

In five seconds I can hardly even get into 2nd order thinking.

How many Ns deep can you go in 5 seconds?

Do you have a halting routine built in so that you can attend to other tasks?

„This is what I experienced“ is not the same as „this is what I believe in“.

Me telling you „I once was told by a nazi that all Jews need to be punished for their sins“ does not make me a nazi.

What you think is nihilism is not nihilism. Please change your semantic understanding of this word to be more in line with reality.

Yawn

Only tangentially related, but giant tortoises are thought to have floated (they can't really swim) a thousand kilometers to the Galapagos from the coast of South America, where they later went extinct.

I imagine most of the tortoises that found themselves floating in the Pacific never made landfall!

Only tangentially related, but humans are thought to have floated (they can't really swim that distance) around fifteen hundred kilometers to the Galapagos from the coasts of Central America, where they later caused the extinction of Giant Tortoises.

That reminds me of that Werner Herzog documentary on Penguins, and the one Penguin that leaves to group just to wander off into the island towards certain death.

https://youtu.be/mnTU_hJoByA?t=131

yes, the image of that lone penguin setting off to the horizon with (what i read as) resolution had stuck on my mind. perhaps i was seeing too much of myself in it (and i think many others do too).

For anyone interested in pre-GPS nav: https://www.fastcompany.com/3047828/who-needs-gps-the-forgot...

Etak (not exactly that article) discussed recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40047806

I live in a city in northeastern Brazil where the prevailing winds blow from the sea to the land. From March to May, the air is filled with butterflies, creating a striking natural spectacle. Curiously, these butterflies mostly fly against the wind, heading towards the sea and seemingly aiming for Africa, despite no nearby islands. It's an annual phenomenon that remains a mystery to me... a butterfly on an endless journey.

For some butterflies the migration takes a few generations

How is this possible? I cant even walk 10 miles without needing food. Where did the butterflies store their energy? So many questions...

Amazing if true.

Well, I certainly hope the butterfly has more energy after eating through one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, a chocolate cake, an ice-cream, a pickle, a cheese, a salami, a lollipop, a cherry pie, a sausage, a cupcake, a watermelon, and finally a green leaf.

For the out of loop non-Anglo parents / non-parents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Very_Hungry_Caterpillar

Not just for Anglos! I have it in Russian and Dutch too.

From your link: "... translated into more than 60 languages ..."

One has to appreciate how someone put conscious effort to write a "Synopsis" that's larger than the book itself.

> …parents…

Hey, we were all kids once!

...and we've all been out of the loop at least once (probably more, if my personal experiences are any guide :) )

As a parent of a 2.5yo, this made me laugh :) thank you

As the parent of a 30 year old, it made me smile and think "hmm, what was the name of that book?" :)

He was a big fat caterpillar

>"How is this possible? I cant even walk 10 miles without needing food. Where did the butterflies store their energy?"

Air is a very different substance at that size scale. It is quite thick and viscous. It would be more accurate to say that the butterflies floated across the Atlantic. Locust hordes do the same, and can travel thousands of miles via the jet stream. They are not flapping their wings to maintain thrust the entire way.

Try walking further: calculate a loop of slightly longer than that and go for it.

I’ve had a lot of fun doing exactly this as exercise in the last few years - picking incrementally longer “loops” of distance and just fucking going for it with a bunch of water or Gatorade equivalents :)

Caveat: may become addictive.

> How is this possible?

Countries in the Caribbean regularly get air quality problems because of wind borne dust. From Africa.

And South Florida

Just two words to add to this theme:

Pantala flavescens

> Pantala flavescens wikipedia: Globe skimmers make an annual multigenerational journey of some 18,000 km (about 11,200 miles); to complete the migration, individual globe skimmers fly more than 6,000 km (3,730 miles)—one of the farthest known migrations of all insect species.

Wow!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantala_flavescens

> How is this possible?

Wind ?

From the article: “We estimate that without wind, the butterflies could have flown a maximum of 780 km [485 miles] before consuming all their fat and, therefore, their energy.”

So they can fly 485 miles without wind? that is still an unbelievably long way!

It's about San Francisco to San Diego, or the length of Italy (Venice to Bari, where the "heel of the boot" starts).

Amazing!!! But, jee, think of all the butterflies and other insects picked up by the wind that didn’t make it

That is some amazing freaking efficiency right there.

They're more efficient than bicycles

They should ride the bike then!

Don't let Leary read this: he'd start underfueling his jets on flight going with the wind.

You could walk for many days without food if it was your only hope of living.

Yes you can. People vastly underestimate their bodies.

How do they know the butterflies didn’t, say, hitch a ride on a cruise ship with a flower garden?

Or for that matter, weren't brought intentionally by someone who traveled on a ship with the equivalent of a terrarium or something that would keep them alive that long?

Or nestled in a flowery hat work by someone on a trans-atlantic flight? SO many holes in this story... :-)

It's flowery hats all the way down

I was about to say, they seem to entirely forget about the existence of ships - humans are pretty good at displacing species around the place.

I learned this weekend that birds routinely get trapped in the eye of hurricanes and have to keep moving with it despite being exhausted, for hundreds of miles.

Wow, if you put it like that arduous journeys transporting you to other realms are actually happening!

How do they know that the butterflies weren't aboard a ship?

Birds often take a ride or stop to rest for a while, but for insects ships are probably too slow to survive without any food.

Butterfly flies 2600 miles across the ocean just to be caught by a human in a jar to be DNA sequenced ...

I’ve never personally seen a butterfly glide past a second or two. Are they capable of long distance gliding? The alternative that they’re flapping their wings continuously for weeks on end seems almost unbelievable.

I assume they are casually flapping but the wind is carrying them much, much further than they would ordinarily move.

You should read about the monarch butterfly and what its lifecycle entails

They flew the Atlantic. 2600 miles. Somehow stayed together. Ten at least made it, as a group, with tattered wings. To have it all ended by an entomologist wondering how they got there.

So the butterflies flew 2600 miles only to be killed for study by some curious entomologists?

I'm fascinated by the idea that a group of butterflies made it across the Atlantic without stopping. It's not hard to imagine a butterfly that's been blown off course by a hurricane ending up on a distant shore. Maybe these butterflies are like the cockroaches of the insect world - they can survive anywhere.

This is incredible, would love to see a breakdown of the fat store and energy these butterflies would have required to make a 5-8 day journey. Seem impossible feat of nature, how do they stay awake and navigate!? So many unanswered questions.

It's rather shocking that they stayed together over such a long journey that included no stops. I tend to agree with the other commentators that they didn't fly the whole way to South America.

I just ordered this same type of butterfly for my kid to hatch at home. I’m not sure where they are shipping from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a non native variety being sold.

and boy are my arms tired

How much energy do they expend and how can they do it when there's no food sources for them?

New world monkey hypothesized to have drifted on a raft from Africa to South America.

They probably rest on the ocean thanks to surface tension.

Its not obvious (to me) that they need to rest. They're small enough not to need it.

The energy to fly those distances, however...

How do we know they didn't land on ocean debris?

Why would it matter? Its not food.

I mean...where they gonna stop?

wind, is that that hard to guess?

It's one thing to guess, or conjucture a hypothesis.

It is another thing to track down all the data, do all the calculations, and actually provide confirmation for the hypothes, and put it out there for others to confirm or not-confirm.

The former is just a guess in the wind (maybe worth a Tweet - "Check out this odd thing!"); the latter is applying science and is worth an article.

I like butterflies and moths

How do we know the butterflies didn't piggyback on a flight?

have you seen flight prices these days ?

Summary: under the right condition like wind butterflies fly a long way.

Did they actually fly? Or lean on the wind? Because recently there has been news of spiders flying.. not really flying but traveling through the air via wind

How do we know they didn't construct aeroplanes and fly in the comfort of business class? (I know that we're no supposed to sneer at the community but with so many stupid questions it's hard to restrain myself)

Feels like it's more likely they got trapped in a plane, ship, box and got there unwillingly. I'm surprised as a scientist you can get to this conclusion

I'm surprised that one can feel okay with completely dismissing scientific observations on the basis of "feels like".

They explicitly say "this method is not perfect and still hinges primarily on educated guesswork". So why are they dismissing a completely possible explanation? At least they should mention that's it's a possibility

You mean like how the actual paper linked in the article identified that as a common form of transportation?

You should consider reading the article where the evidence against this is explicitly discussed in detail.

I have read it, I don't see any mention of that in the article.

I think you have to read more carefully next time:

"To figure out how the painted ladies ended up in French Guiana, researchers approached the question from many angles. They looked at weather data for the weeks leading up to the butterflies’ arrival and saw that wind conditions could have supported a voyage from Africa to South America.

They also sequenced the butterflies’ genomes and learned that they were relatives of insects from Africa and Europe, which helped them rule out the possibility that the migrants had flown from North America. In addition, they analyzed isotopes in the butterflies’ wings, which can point to their area of origin—this suggested they were born in western Europe and western Africa.

Providing yet another line of evidence, the team sequenced the DNA of pollen grains stuck to the butterflies’ bodies. This allowed them to identify the plants the creatures had recently visited—Guiera senegalensis and Ziziphus spina-christi, two shrub species that only flower at the end of West Africa’s rainy season."

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